Finally Finished!

So.The outdoor bench thing is finally finished. Shame it isn’t summer anymore!It’s quite comfortable, but the arms are a bit low.It’s a very simple design (see below) – I think I saw something like it during research (posh name for surfing), but I don’t know where.What did I learn?Lots…

Most importantly – do NOT buy completely unfinished boards – I estimate that about 80% of the time making this (about 3 weeks beginning to end, but I don’t work hard) was spent simply smoothing the boards from “rough cut” to something vaguely passable. For small money they’d have cleaned them at the yard. This also killed my belt sander (a cheap one), but it was under guarantee and they just gave me another one. It also killed my angle grinder (a very worthwhile 10 bux) – next week I’ll take that back and they’ll probably give me another one of them too – I love“2 year guarantee” tools.

Need to be more careful on board selection. There’s some quite red beech, and some that’s quite white. The problem was I was trying to pick the boards whilst perched about 4 metres up on a huge stack of wood at a yard where they were obviously waiting to go to lunch. I had my sketch – but matching what’s available at the time to what you need isn’t easy. I guess I should have gone more slowly, or gone back later – but patience isn’t my thing.

I’m getting better at the sizes – this one is basically similar to the adirondack sizes – gone, hopefully, are the days of making things that are only suitable for giants.

It is NOT smart to cut something an inch too big “because you can always sand it down” – it’s just that I have this fear of cutting too small (from which it’s really hard to recover) – but this again added to the (unenjoyable) sanding time.

Glue is a big problem. “So a thin bead of glue squeezes out” all the books say. Trouble is, you then have that bead to get rid of. And, almost by definition, it’s in a place, like a corner, where it’s hard to sand, or impossible – my sanding finger is about an inch shorter now, but presumably it’ll grow back. And when I think of all those paper nail file things they used to give me on flights when I used to travel – and I threw them away!

The planks are flush with the sides – since I cut them too long (by between half and one inch) I cut as much as I can with a saw, then I use the angle grinder with sanding disk to get rid of most of it before switching to the sander.

-- "Do not speak – unless it improves on silence." --- "Following the rules and protecting the regulations is binding oneself without rope."